Cardinals Non-Tender Steve Cishek

The Cardinals announced that they have non-tendered right-hander Steve Cishek as well as catcher Cody Stanley. The latter of the two, as Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes (Twitter link), is in the midst of serving a suspension.

Cishek’s non-tender wasn’t necessarily unexpected, considering his lofty $7.1MM arbitration projection (per MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz). Nevertheless, his entry into the free-agent market is notable, as teams will now have the opportunity to negotiate with a player that was once considered to be a star-caliber closer.

The 29-year-old Cishek saved 88 games for the Marlins from 2012-14 and logged a stellar 2.65 ERA with 9.9 K/9 and 3.2 BB/9 over his first 257 2/3 innings as a Major League reliever (2010-14). However, he struggled in the early stages of the 2015 season, even earning a demotion to the minors along the way. Cishek performed well at Triple-A and yielded just one earned run across 12 2/3 innings in his return to the Majors before being traded to St. Louis for right-hander Kyle Barraclough.

With the Cardinals, Cishek posted a strong 2.31 ERA, but that number didn’t tell the full story of his work in St. Louis, as he posted a somewhat troublesome 20-to-13 K/BB ratio in 23 1/3 innings with his new club. His velocity was also down in 2015, as his 90.8 mph average heater was the lowest of his career and a good bit south of the ~92.5 mph he averaged when at his best.

Although he’s coming off the worst season of his career, Cishek still seems like a candidate to land a big league deal when considering his entire body of work at the Major League level: a 2.82 ERA, 9.6 K/9, 3.4 BB/9 and a 50.1 percent ground-ball rate.

As more RP get non-tendered, the better pool of options may present an opportunity. it is the possibility to land a quality arm at a good price who was set to make too much money for their old host team. Cishek could be one of them. Looking forward to see what the final tally of options are by tomorrow.

Worn out arm however from early Marlins days. Look at his number of appearences. Fish do that as they won’t fill a pen, just burn out 1-3 people, then find another when they toast a guy, rest are usually junk, except for the 1-3 main guys.

Last 3-4 years all they have had is Cishek, Ryan Webb and Mike Dunn, until 2015 and forced those 3 to throw upwards of 70+ games each season. Can’t expect any reliever to continually do that year after year.

Last couple of years Cishek has lost a cpl of ticks off of his FB and his GB% has dropped below 50% from it’s once stellar rate.

Every bullpen only has 2-3 guys that can really be trusted. All fans complain their favorite team’s manager over-uses them, then complains when a different (worse) reliever logs high-leverage innings, then complains the manager should pull his starters earlier.